legendary_totoro’s Haven
Poker

First Live Game in a While

Tuesday 15 July 2008 by legendary_totoro

I’m more of an online player than a live one as I tend to have more difficulties to make a correct read on live players. This game was a nice occasion to try to adapt my online playstyle to a live party...

SNG Structure

At 9PM last Sunday, we gathered 7 people for a live $10 SNG (Sit and Go). One thing to note down was the participation of a couple for only one buy-in so there was actually $60 of prize pool (instead of $70). The host of the game decided the payouts would be :
- 1st place for $30
- 2nd place for $20
- 3rd place for $10

with blinds levels :
- 5/10
- 10/20
- 25/50
- Double the previous level (50/100, then 100/200, etc) from there on

and a starting stack of 700.

Whereas online and other organized games have a blind increase every set period of time (eg 20 mins, 10 mins), here the blinds would go up only after each elimination. This is an important difference with the games I usually play online so I wasn’t too sure how I’d adapt.

Notes on the players

We drew the seat assignements as follow :
- Seat 1 : S (D)
- Seat 2 : Ja
- Seat 3 : L
- Seat 4 : me
- Seat 5 : P
- Seat 6 : Jo
- Seat 7 : R

NB : Privacy concerns so only initials here, should be enough for the players who were there to recognize themselves

R is a poker buddy and we often comment our hands during online sessions and share some bad beats stories as well. He’s shown success online with several big MTT cashes so being as far as possible from him was a good thing to begin with.

L isn’t someone I had lots on info about but he displayed some chip tricks so I assumed he was very familiar with the game. Being on his left wasn’t a good sign.

I had no game experience with Jo & S (the aformentionned couple) but since they were entering the game with 1 buy-in for 2 people, they couldn’t be too confident about it.

I’ve known P & Ja during some MtG (Magic : the Gathering) games so I know for sure P is the embodiment of "I play to have fun". I’m not too worried to have him on my left but maybe his poker style is different...

Ja is the competitive one, always looking for a challenge, may be a good thing L is between the 2 of us so I can fold more easily (yeah I play chicken style =P)

From what I could tell before the game, the most experienced players would be R & L but we had to look out for the crowd of beginners as they tend to hit their chases more than we’d like them to...

Shuffle up & Deal !

First level of blind : 5/10

As experts of the game could have predicted the first rounds of hands saw a lot of limping, not much action on the flop aside from 1xBB or 2xBB bets and calls down to the river.

First hand I won was QT suited limped from SB which flopped an open ended straight draw. I started being a calling station and rivered my straight with 4 connected cards on board, and of course I have the nut straight. I value bet and Ja calls with an under straight.

I also got involved with P from SB vs BB (and probably some other limpers) with T6 suited. I flopped middle pair 6 checked around, turn T for 2 pairs I bet and got called, river brought a 3rd club but I still opened the betting. P minraised me and I called like a donk...to see his rivered flush with 2 baby cards.

Another hand, I limped from SB with 6s7s to see a 642 rainbow. I bet my top pair + gutshot, only to get called by S. 6 on the turn I bet my trips she called. I don’t remember what the river was, but I remembe firing a third shell, and she minraised me. I decided to call, only to see her flopped straight with 35o...

More folding from my part until I get TT in UTG+1, I open for a std raise and get 3 callers to the 9 high flop. I pot bet and they folded. I also held QQ and later on AK that I raised 4xBB (too much ?) and got no action.

At this point, P was the CL (Chip Leader) over 1k and I was floating around the starting stack. I don’t remember who was the most crippled since everyone seemed to have about the same stack (from 500 to 700). We didn’t have big action so far though a couple big hands hit our beginners (AA, QQ, JJ if I recall correctly).

I didn’t get involved much with R or L which wasn’t too bad since we weren’t to confront with each other too early.

Before moving on, I’d like to write a few things down. From the beginning of the game, one player has been :
- touching other players chips and stacking them if they were thrown to far on the table.
- saying out loud who was to act preflop and in every single step of an ongoing hand.
- asking people to put out their blinds and sometimes forgetting to put his in before another guy asked him to.

I don’t know if this is actually wrong etiquette or just a lack of awareness of how annoying this behaviour could be... I’ll just be addressing the previous points from my POV :
- Anything related to chips once they are thrown in the middle is the dealer’s job and responsability. He could receive some help if he can’t reach the chips but that’s about what you can do here. It’s my right to throw them in a sliding motion, don’t ever touch my chips again to put them back in a stacked way.
- I for one, keep track of the action and know if it’s my turn to act so reminding me is just useless, unless you wanna get on my nerves. Sometimes if someone has been chatty or not following the action, I think it’s okay to remind him his turn to act and once again this is the dealer’s job.
- Just a question of "mind your own business" here. If you have the time to ask for other people to put out their blinds, just concentrate on yours and never forget to put them out. Again, that’s the dealer’s task to ask for the correct blinds to be put.

I don’t wanna sound too harsh here since I’m not used to play live game and maybe this is something you see on a regular basis. But it doesn’t sound to me like that player was an expert here so consider this to be kindly educationnal, ok ?


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